In any corporate environment, the flow of information between different entities within the corporation plays a crucial role in corporate performance. The larger the organization becomes, the more complex the information transfer network becomes. The larger the information transfer network becomes, the more susceptible it becomes to poor resource allocation. For example, information handled by one entity may also be handled concurrently by another entity thereby producing redundant results. Also, information generated by one entity may no longer be needed by other entities in the corporation thereby wasting valuable resources. Such a scenario results in suboptimal information flow between two communicating entities.
One solution proposed to overcome this inefficient mode of information flow is to manually track the information flow within an organization. This solution can be implemented by employing a number of management consultants whose tasks would be, among others, to identify information paths, the different entities involved and the information required and generated by each entity. The initial characterization of the system is one of the areas that renders the analysis of an information exchange cumbersome as the systems become more complex. To perform an accurate and useful analysis, a global knowledge base must be built from each individual knowledge base within the information exchange. The next step is to analyze this information to identify areas where performance degradation occurs and suggest alternative methods for transferring information or performing certain tasks.
While such a solution may be viable for a small information exchange, as the organizations grow and the information exchange becomes more and more complex, such an approach becomes inadequate. In particular, there is a need to optimize the flow of information where there are numerous entities involved in a complex information exchange. Thus, it is imperative to identify and modify suboptimal information flow to improve performance.